T-Mobile's SVP of Marketing thinks that AT&T and Verizon are barking up the wrong tree with family data plans

AT&T and Verizon Wireless are planning to introduce new family data plans this summer in order to simplify data management across multiple devices. Numerous wireless devices would share a single pool of data per month instead of being charged a fixed amount per month for each device.

T-Mobile, however, isn't keen on this change in direction by the two largest wireless carriers in the United States. According to Andrew Sherrard, T-Mobile's senior vice president of marketing, family data plans are bad for customers. Sherrard feels that having multiple people (or devices) on family data share plans will lead to customers constantly fearing that they will go over their data allotment.

T-Mobile believes that consumers today do not want a ‘one size fits all’ approach to shared family data plans, nor would they benefit from that model."

So if family data plans aren't the answer, what is T-Mobile's alternative? The company feels that it offers the right balance for customers with no-annual-contract data plans (daily, weekly, or monthly) for tablets, "unlimited" data plans (in T-Mobile's case, unlimited means full speed data access until you hit your monthly threshold, then reduced speeds until the end of your billing cycle), and the addition of mobile hotspot functionality with 5GB and 10GB data plans.

However, until AT&T and Verizon Wireless announce pricing for their respective family data plans, we won't know which solution offers the best value for customers. And even when pricing is revealed, no one solution is going to be perfect for every family or situation.

Exactly. If this was really about offering the customers more options, then some of these data plans would be cheaper than the previous unlimited. That's obviously not the case. Verizon's unlimited data was $30, which is the same price for the new 2GB tier. So, in this case, the customer loses something and gets no benefit. It really insults our intelligence how the companies try to pass this off as being for the customer.